Last week I had one of the worst nightmares a chess coach can experience. No, none of my students blundered a queen nor played the Berlin Variation of the Ruy Lopez—the danger came from a totally different direction. I was watching a playoff...
As chess tournaments go, Tata Steel Chess has run pretty much forever—it has been held annually since 1938 with just one missed year. In that time, it became one of the strongest chess competitions in the world. How to watch the 2022 Tata ...
What, other than hopeless addiction, really keeps me coming back to chess? It's the battle for truth. At a high level, each grandmaster has their "truth" about the game, and a game between two strong players is often not really about ability ...
GM Magnus Carlsen won the 2022 Tata Steel Masters Tournament with a score of 9.5/13, which is his record-breaking eighth win at this prestigious tournament. GMs Shakhriyar Mamedyarov and Richard Rapport both scored 8/13. In the Challengers Tourn...
The 2021 FIDE World Rapid & Blitz Championships will start on December 26. We covered the greatest rapid games ever several weeks ago. What about blitz? How to watch the 2021 FIDE World Rapid & Blitz Championship live You can watch...
Chess.com people are the best! I already wrote in my old article that our fellow members are nice, intelligent and always ready to help you. That's why I never miss your comments, my dear readers, since they are always interesting and I learn a lo...
When we were preparing for the 2018 FIDE World Championship, Chess.com compiled a list of the most exciting world championship matches ever. But what were the best ones? Now that the 2021 FIDE World Chess Championship between GM Magnus Carl...
After reading the title of this article, some of you, my dear readers, might think "oh no, not another 'secret' of the Soviet chess school." Indeed, recently we've seen too many similar "revelations." I can vividly see a blurb on one such book whi...
The 2021 FIDE World Championship title match between GMs Magnus Carlsen and Ian "Nepo" Nepomniachtchi promises to excite fans of the game in advance. Like all major sporting clashes, there are a number of easy angles for spectators and pundits to ...
Just as with everything else—hopefully—we learn more and more about chess as the years go by. Opening theory gets consistently deeper, tablebases have solved endgames with up to seven pieces on the board, and computers teach us more th...
Only 22 players in the history of chess have held the official title of world champion, 18 of which held the "classical" title. With rare exceptions, the classical champion has been decided in a match between the sitting champion and a challenger....
No chess event is more important than the world championship. This November, GM Magnus Carlsen will face off against his challenger GM Ian Nepomniachtchi for the crown. It is the next of dozens of matchups throughout history we've been able to wit...
The line between an "amateur" chess player and a professional one can be thin. Soviet chess masters used to have other careers, for example, but they wouldn't have gotten very far at all without their chess skills. We'll even talk about one of the...
Written by Alexey Zakharov In the last hundred or so years, Russia became almost synonymous with chess. The country in its many incarnations—Russian Empire, Soviet Union, and now “just” Russia—produced more grandmasters a...
Competitive chess is a very demanding activity. It requires players to constantly keep the highest level of concentration, stay calm under the pressure and be creative throughout the whole fight. Unsurprisingly, each game has its own story. I have...
The International Chess Federation, commonly referred to by its French acronym FIDE, was established in 1924. At the time, Jose Raul Capablanca was the World Chess Champion, and he continued his reign until 1927. During that time frame, FIDE start...
Whenever I see our readers' comments, I cannot help but think: we have the best chess community on Earth! It is such a striking contrast to the majority of Internet forums, where a typical conversation would be like this: Original Poster: "Are a...
GM Paul Keres is undeniably one of the greatest players of all time, a renowned chess writer, and one of a handful of grandmasters inevitably discussed whenever we speak of that hallowed company that came ever so close to winning the coveted title...
There was an era, a time now frozen in memory, when it seemed like every single time I opened a chess magazine, there was GM Leonid Stein winning a tournament, or he was the subject of a column in a chess newspaper. From the late 1960s to the...
In the introduction to his famous book "Grandmaster Preparation," GM Lev Polugaevsky tells a story that happened on December 17, 1969, when he and ex-world champion GM Mikhail Botvinnik were walking on the streets of Belgrade. Mikhail Botvinnik ...
There's no doubt about it: "The Queen's Gambit" is a huge hit. With incredible performances by the actors, beautiful sets, and a well-constructed plot, it's no wonder the miniseries is so successful. With 68 million households watching the show in...
Endgames. The word, alone, may conjure up feelings of happiness, dread, or even despair for many chess players. Some adore the endgame while others despise it. There is a grain of truth in the old Soviet saying that amateur chess players "play t...
Last week my student told me that his internet opponent played a weird opening. I wasn't surprised a bit since any opening that doesn't allow the Scholar's Mate is labeled as "weird" by this little kid. Yet, I was intrigued when he mentioned that ...
Dear friends, today I'd like to talk about the Karpov vs. Korchnoi World Chess Championship match (Baguio, 1978) and to analyze one moment from the most controversial game of the match. As is well known, Viktor Korchnoi wrote the book "Anti-chess"...
